Low Intensity Democracy Research Articles

Neoliberalism incites but also restrains revolutionary change in the Third World – why articulating multiple struggles is necessary to confront structures of domination

ABSTRACT Neoliberal policies that have been imposed or prompted by Western countries and international organizations have exasperated social inequalities, led to higher levels of unemployment and often ruined agricultural sectors. These policies have eventually incited revolutionary fervor. Nonetheless, in addition to local factors, two external issues have restrained revolutionary change and more substantive socioeconomic change in emerging and developing states: new constitutionalism and low-intensity democracy. Inspired by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, I argue that these implications (normative framework of neoliberalism and low-intensity democracy) serving imperial interests can be confronted by articulating multiple struggles that support social justice, political equality and self-government. Such insights, especially regarding antagonism and hegemony, inspire strategies of revolutionary change against neoliberal hegemony and structures of domination. This strategy, which can be applied to both international and local political struggles, reworks revolutionary change by engaging with Asaf Bayat's reflections and Hannah Arendt's approach to revolution.

The Messy Little Thing Called Peace: Postwar Memories and Durable Disorder in El Salvador

We argue that present-day El Salvador is still enmeshed in a memory struggle over the meanings of the civil war (1980–92). With the United Nations (UN) Truth Commission having failed to address the roots of the civil war and initial postwar amnesty avoiding prosecution and investigation of war crimes, a consensus about the past is yet to be created. Instead, maintaining prewar power constellations and the increased importance of the military make us think of El Salvador as a durable disorder and a low-intensity democracy at best.

Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements: Perspectives on Low-Intensity Democracy in the Face of the Colombian Conflict

During the mid-1980s, Colombia joined the neoliberal global economy in two ways: (1) by implementing a “low-intensity democracy” made up of reforms intended to institutionalize the social protests as a response to the crisis of governance and to promote investor security and (2) by exchanging a protectionist industrialization economic model for an extractivist neoliberal one. The new progressive legislation created inclusive institutions and recognized multiculturalism and social and political rights, but these very rights are denied by the neoliberal economy, which favors big transnational capital and the physical and legal coercion that this model requires. These two pivotal elements of neoliberalism (governance and the economy) are pragmatically incompatible. The dominant class has favored the interests of powerful transnational elites and employed both legal and military avenues. Consequently, 30 years later, the social movements have been only partially and temporarily institutionalized. Active rejection of the economic model is growing. Social organizations have appropriated the concept of human rights and adapted it to their social project, the construction of a peasant economy that opposes the neoliberal one. A mediados de los ochenta, Colombia se unió a la economía neoliberal de dos maneras importantes: (1) implementando una “democracia de baja intensidad” compuesta por reformas que pretendían institucionalizar las protestas sociales como una respuesta a la crisis de gobernabilidad y promover la seguridad de las inversiones, y (2) intercambiando un modelo económico de proteccionismo industrial por uno neoliberal y extractivista. La nueva legislación progresista creó instituciones inclusivas y reconoció el multiculturalismo y los derechos políticos y sociales, pero estos mismos derechos son denegados por la economía neoliberal, que favorece al gran capital transnacional y ejerce la coerción legal y física que requiere dicho modelo. Estos dos elementos esenciales del neoliberalismo (la gobernabilidad y la economía) son incompatibles a nivel pragmático. La clase dominante ha favorecido los intereses de poderosas elites internacionales y empleado vías tanto legales como militares. Como consecuencia, 30 años después, los movimientos sociales sólo han sido parcial y temporalmente institucionalizados. Las organizaciones sociales se han apropiado el concepto de los derechos humanos y lo han adaptado a su proyecto social: la construcción de una economía campesina opuesta a la neoliberal.

Low-Intensity Democracy and Peru’s Neoliberal State: The Case of the Humala Administration

The election of Ollanta Humala in 2011 did not lead to a radical break from neoliberalism as many expected. His administration continued and deepened Peru’s conservative political and economic regime, its “low-intensity democracy.” His lack of a shift has been attributed to electoral dynamics, his leadership style, and the weakness of political parties. However, these readings overlook the structural impediments to any left government in Peru and Humala’s readiness to adapt his politics to this neoliberal reality. The power of Peru’s neoliberal political elite, the United States, economic groups, and transnational capital have all helped to constitute a structure of elite rule strong enough to prevent a radical shift. La elección de Ollanta Humala en el 2011 no condujo a una ruptura radical con el neoliberalismo, a diferencia de lo que esperaban muchos. Su administración mantuvo y profundizó el régimen político y económico conservador del Perú, su “democracia de baja intensidad”. La falta de cambio se ha atribuido a la dinámica electoral, su estilo de liderazgo y la debilidad de los partidos políticos. Sin embargo, estas interpretaciones ignoran los impedimentos estructurales existentes en Perú para cualquier gobierno de izquierda, así como la predisposición de Humala a adaptar su política a esta realidad neoliberal. El poder de la élite política neoliberal del Perú, los Estados Unidos, los grupos económicos y el capital transnacional han ayudado a construir una estructura de poder elitista lo suficientemente fuerte como para prevenir un cambio radical.

Dayton +20: peacebuilding and the perils of exclusivity

This paper reviews the past two decades of peacebuilding in Bosnia through the lens of recent debates around inclusivity. It explores how the exclusive pact-making of the Dayton Accords – and the elite-centrism of the subsequent peace implementation process – has precluded the emergence of a social contract between the Bosnian state and Bosnian society. In particular, the paper suggests that in combination with the Dayton agreement’s well-known structural flaws, the broader tendency of key international actors to view Bosnia’s peace process in terms of elite-level relations across the international–domestic divide has perpetuated conditions of low-intensity democracy in Bosnia. The growing attention to questions of inclusivity, conversely, views peacebuilding increasingly in terms of a longer term effort to strengthen state–society relations. In the light of emerging insights from the inclusivity debate, the paper emphasises the need to attend more carefully to the relationship between how, and with whom, peace is negotiated in the short term and how it is subsequently implemented over the longer term.

US Foreign Policy, Business NGOs and Low-Intensity Democracy

US Foreign Policy, Business NGOs and Low-Intensity Democracy

Ativismo judicial e democracia: a atuação do STF e o exercício da cidadania no Brasil

The aim of this work is to demonstrate the overcoming of the model of the Liberal State, especially evidenced in Brazil by the consecration of the principles of the welfare state in our Constitution, legitimizes the possibilities of judicial activism. It aims to discuss the contradictions inherent to judicial activism, especially that played by the Supreme Court, under the Brazilian experience. This academic article examines even if there is a relationship between the advent of judicial activism in Brazil and the limitations of its representative model of democracy. The discussion about the topic presented is fundamental thanks to the emergence of new political actors who express themselves in the streets and show the limits of the current democratic system, for example, in the June days of 2013. This analysis concludes that there is a relationship between the evolution of the state from liberal to social, and the advent of judicial activism, which configuration reveals an inherent contradiction: it demonstrates, on one hand, a greater commitment of the judiciary to the ideals of the welfare state, but on the other, allows judges to decide on mainly political issues, contributing to citizens removal of the public sphere since, as decided by the judiciary, these policy issues lurk in purely technical matters. This is a work tied to a legal-sociological approach, using as technical research historical-legal analysis. The research techniques used are bibliographic, legislative, and judicial review, having been mobilized primarily theoretical categories of judicial activism, low intensity democracy and ideology of competence

Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the international factor in MENA's failed democratization

What explains the almost wholly negative impact of international factors on post-uprising democratization prospects? This article compares the utility of rival “diffusionist” and neo-Gramscian political economy frames to explain this. Multiple international factors deter democratization. The failure of Western democracy promotion is rooted in the contradiction between the dominance of global finance capital and the norm of democratic equality; in the periphery, neo-liberalism is most compatible with hybrid regimes and, at best, “low intensity democracy”. In MENA, neo-liberalism generated crony capitalism incompatible with democratization; while this also sparked the uprisings, these have failed to address class inequalities. Moreover at the normative level, MENA hosts the most credible counter-hegemonic ideologies; the brief peaking of democratic ideology in the region during the early uprisings soon declined amidst regional discourse wars. Non-democrats – coercive regime remnants and radical charismatic movements – were empowered by the competitive interference of rival powers in uprising states. The collapse of many uprising states amidst a struggle for power over the region left an environment uncongenial to democratization.

Low-intensity democracy and political crisis in Haiti: the North American contribution

This article makes the case that Canada and the United States have contributed to blocking Haiti's path towards democratic development over the last decade by perpetuating neoliberal economic policies and promoting a form of low-intensity democracy based on the political leadership of elite sectors. This approach has placed North American actors at loggerheads with popular civil society in Haiti, contributed to Haiti's permanent crisis, and exacerbated both the country's status as a “failed state” and the necessity of ongoing international stabilisation efforts. If Haiti is to escape its permanent political crisis, a paradigm shift is required in the thinking of foreign policymakers.Résumé Cet article soutient que le Canada et les États-Unis ont contribué à entraver du développement démocratique d'Haïti durant la dernière décennie en perpétuant des politiques économiques néolibérales qui ont un faible niveau d'appui et en promouvant une forme de démocratie très limitée fondée sur le leadership politique d'une élite. Cette approche oppose les acteurs nord-américains à la société civile haïtienne, contribue à l’état de crise permanente qui prévaut dans le pays et exacerbe son statut d’état en déliquescence et le besoin continu d'interventions internationales de stabilisation. Pour qu'Haïti échappe à cet état de crise politique permanente, il est nécessaire que s'accomplisse un changement de paradigme chez les décideurs responsables de la politique étrangère.

People Power in the Era of Global Crisis: rebellion, resistance, and liberation

This article examines the relationship between oppression, injustice, and liberation both theoretically and practically and in relation to contemporary global events and political history. The struggle for human freedom and liberation from structures of oppression and exploitation, and the relation to democracy and to the agents of social change, is the central subject of the analysis. The article summarises the critical analyses of the contributors to this collection, who examine the past several decades of `People Power' via popular struggles for substantive democratisation, and assess both the obstacles and achievements of these movements in a context of global, regional, and national political economic tendencies. The authors revisit the theses of `Low Intensity Democracy', which appeared in the early 1990s, in light of the recent upsurge of popular protest and rebellion in the context of an on-going global crisis.

‘It's the political, stupid’: national versus transnational perspectives on democratisation in Iraq

William Robinson's work on democracy promotion focuses on polyarchy, or low-intensity democracy, a form of political regime that favours the Parsonian-Schumpeterian focus on electoral procedures between competing elites, as being the model promoted by the United States since the 1980s. Robinson argues that democracy promotion is an instrument working in favour of a capitalist transnational elite, organising the capitalist domination of popular masses and taming potential aspirations for enlarged democratisation of the social and economic life. This article focuses on the implications of such questioning of Robinson's understanding of democracy promotion and claims back democracy promotion from its Robinsonian instrumentalisation. In other words, the article argues that it is necessary to reconstruct democracy by putting some normative and political flesh back on its frame; a much needed conceptual enterprise that is critical to rejecting the contemporary mantra insisting on free-market economy and Parsonian-Schumpeterian procedural liberal democracy as the best package to spread democracy. Consequently, we claim that while there are clearly historical instances of democracy promotion used to achieve other means than genuine democratisation, i.e. democracy promotion as foreign policy instruments; there are also instances of democracy promotion being non-instrumentalised. Consequently, we argue that particular national problems of democracy promotion are relatively more important to consider than those generated by transnational processes identified by Robinson. The recent case of democratisation in Iraq provides the empirical background on which our conceptual argument relies.

Challenges to the Theory and Practice of Polyarchy: the rise of the political left in Korea

This paper provides an analysis of the development of democracy in Korea since the transition from authoritarianism in 1987, and its implications for critical analyses of Third World democratisation. Accounts of ‘low intensity democracy’ or ‘polyarchy’ have noted Third World democratisation for its constrained and elite-centred nature, and as an outcome of US foreign policy, which has sought to demobilise restive popular movements and extend the reach of global capital. However, the Korean general elections of 2004 saw the historic entry of the explicitly socialist Korean Democratic Labour Party (kdlp) into the National Assembly. A re-examination of post-authoritarian politics in fact shows a process of continuous contestation that belies the claims made by the polyarchy literature. Formal democratisation has by its very nature allowed for a counter-movement to be mobilised. The paper also examines the relationship between the kdlp and the mass labour union movement and argues that, while democracy has provided opportunities for participation by previously marginalised social forces, concomitant neoliberal restructuring has limited the development of the mass movements from which such political projects draw their strength. Thus, inquiry into the implications of democratisation for a progressive challenge to neoliberal capitalism must also extend beyond ‘politics’ to mass movements in the socioeconomic sphere.

Low-Intensity Democracy Revisited: The Effects of Economic Liberalization on Political Activity in Latin America

Existing literature emphasizes the disorganizing or weakening effects of economic liberalization on civil society, whereby free-market policies are said to demobilize and depoliticize collective actors. The article evaluates the effects of economic liberalization on large-scale societal mobilizations across seventeen Latin American countries for the period 1970–2000. The article further tests the effects of economic liberalization on individual political participation across sixteen Latin American countries for the period 1980–2000. In contrast to the atomization literature, this article provides strong evidence that economic liberalization leads to greater levels of societal mobilization in the context of free-market democratization. The article also demonstrates that economic liberalization does not induce a decline in political participation. Collectively, these results cast doubt on the theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings presented in Kurtz (2004).

The 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia: A Case Study in High Politics and Rank-and-File Execution

The principal elements of the opposition against Eduard Shevarnadze were trained and financed by the US government and mainstream US NGOs. The Georgian opposition's orientation towards an alliance with the West and a state of “low-intensity democracy” were in accordance with the interests of Euro-Atlantic (especially US) capital. The US agenda is to ensure economic and geo-political dominance in Eurasia by means of a shift in allegiances of the local elites and the concomitant prevention of deeper democratisation. The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role. (Brzezinski)

Democratizing democracy: beyond the liberal democratic canon

The major conflicts between the north and the south can be expected to result from the confrontation of alternative conceptions of democracy, mainly between liberal or representative democracy and participatory democracy. The liberal, representative model of democracy, while prevailing on a global scale, guarantees no more than a low-intensity democracy. In recent times, however, participatory democracy has exhibited a new dynamic, engaging mainly subaltern communities and social groups that fight against social exclusion and the suppression of citizenship. In this collection of reports from the global South - India, South Africa, Mozambique, Colombia and Brazil - De Sousa Santos and his colleagues show how, in some cases, a deepening of democracy results from the development of dual forms of participatory and representative systems, and points to the emergence of transnational networks of participatory democratic initiatives. Such networks pave the way to the reinvention of social emancipation.

Paramilitarism and Colombia's Low-Intensity Democracy

In the late 1980s and early 1990s political liberalisation, including the reduction of the military's institutional prerogatives, occurred in Colombia despite the increasing strength of an internal insurgency. Why would Colombia's national political elite weaken the institutional role of the armed forces in the context of an escalating internal war? What was the role of paramilitary groups, which were responsible for the vast majority of massacres and political violence against suspected unarmed civilians, during the 1990s? This paper argues that the elite civilian politicians who dominated the Colombian state promoted formal institutional changes, but tolerated paramilitary repression in order to counteract a strengthening guerrilla insurgency. These civilian leaders represented a modernising elite focused upon co-opting political opposition and establishing neoliberal economic reforms, thus constructing a Low-Intensity Democracy.

Democracy and the multinationals

The relationship between western multinational corporations' perceived commercial interests and democratic quality in developing markets is more varied than habitually argued. While autocratic policy making and low-intensity democracy have been judged to provide benefits to investors, they are also increasingly recognized to generate features prejudicial to commercial operations. Many investment trends reflect the adverse impact of democratic limitations in developing markets. Multinational companies can be faulted less for a uniform effort to frustrate democratic improvements than for a failure to develop a coherent or proactive engagement in relation to the international democracy promotion agenda.

American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts

Introduction PART I: US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN THEORY 1. Peace, Liberty and Democracy: Realists and Liberals Contest a Legacy 2. US Democracy Promotion: Realist Reflections 3. US Democracy Promotion: Critical Questions PART II: DEMOCRACY PROMOTION AS US GRAND STRATEGY? 4. National Security Liberalism and American Foreign Policy 5. America's Liberal Grand Strategy: Democracy and National Security in the Post-War Era 6. America's Identity, Democracy Promotion and National Interests: Beyond Realism, Beyond Idealism PART III: US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION: THE DOMESTIC CONTEXT 7. Promotion of Democracy as a Popular Demand? 8. Taking Stock of US Democracy Assistance 9. High Stakes and Low Intensity Democracy: Understanding America's Policy of Promoting Democracy 10. Wilsonianism Resurgent? The Clinton Administration and the Promotion of Democracy PART IV: US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN PRACTICE 11. Russia: Limping along towards American Democracy? 12. Three Frameworks in Search of a Policy: US Democracy Promotion in Asia-Pacific 13. The Impasse of Third World Democratization: Africa Revisited 14. Promoting Capitalist Polyarchy: The Case of Latin America 15. American Power, Neo-Liberal Globalization and Low Intensity Democracy: an Unstable Trinity

South Africa's transition to democracy and the 'change industry': A case study of IDASA

Polyarchical forms of democracy are not about promoting democratic input into the everyday life of citizens, but rather have become a useful mechanism to soothe social and political pressures, creating a state of 'low-intensity democracy'. Struggles for popular democracy are profound threats to established elites. In many 'democratic transitions', these threats have been dissipated by the promotion of polyarchy as the new dispensation. What has occurred in contentious transitions such as South Africa, has been an attempt to construct hegemony via a reformulation of the mode of political rule: from the overtly coercive (such as apartheid) to a more consensual-based order. The result has been to pre-empt fundamental economic change. During the South African transition, various actors within civil society, characterised as the 'change industry', (such as IDASA) made important interventions in the debate on what democracy was to be in a post-apartheid dispensation. Their work helped convert the mass organisations away from popular democracy and towards more formal and procedural models of democratic governance.

Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony

Introduction: from East-West to North-South: US intervention in the 'new world order' 1. From 'straight power concepts' to 'persuasion' in US foreign policy 2. Political operations in US foreign policy 3. The Philippines: 'molded in the image of American democracy' 4. Chile: ironing out a 'Fluke' of the political system 5. Nicaragua: from low-intensity warfare to low-intensity democracy 6. Haiti: the 'practically insolvable problem' of establishing consensual domination 7. Conclusions: the future of polyarchy and global society.